First estimate of homeless people was done in Canada in 1987 through the work of the Canadian Council on Social Development. Then Statistics Canada estimated homeless in 2001 to be over 14,000 individuals. This number is under represented and other strategies needed to be implemented to have a correct estimate like the development of the Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS) that captures more complete information on shelter users in cities across Canada. Some Canadian cities have also started local homelessness counts to estimate the numbers of homeless and at‐risk persons in their jurisdictions. Why we can not estimate homeless people count goes back to the lack of a consistent definition of homelessness, difficulty in identifying homeless persons, the transient nature of homelessness, difficulty in communicating with homeless persons, and lack of participation by local agencies. (Frankish, 2009,p3-4) Estimation of number of homeless people is usually necessary for several reasons, for documentation and analysis as well as to be efficient in our resources and distribute it properly, We have limited funds or any source that might help and therefore giving away without predicting how much we are going to provide is not good economically.
Homeless people usually suffer from mental disorders, “mental illness” incorporates a wide selection of diseases which affect the thinking, cognition and mood of an individual. Examples are phobic or anxiety disorder, while they will disrupt life, might not be chronically debilitating. Psychotic disorders like schizophrenia have social and occupational limitations. Also, major affective disorders, such as, major depression or manic-depressive illness, will be disabling and chronic. Serious mental disorders may steal the emotional and cognitive skills from an individual which are needed to achieve low income for basic needs, apply for income supplements, and generate social support. People won’t be granted access to assist centers if they showed bizarre behavior. Also, physical complications from acutely psychotic behavior, like trauma or communicable disease, increase chances of mortality. (Buckner, 1993, p2) Therefore, more education is needed with personnel dealing with such people, how to sedate these people and provide them shelter rather than not allowing them shelter for such behavior, as in the end they are affected person resulting from trauma and multiple factors contributing to the person’s behavior we see now adays.
Some tried to estimate the prevalence of psychotic illness, major depression, personality disorder, alcohol dependence, and substance dependence in homeless people, published between January 1966 and December 2007. Computer based literature, scanned reference lists and journals were employed in a study in University of Oxford. They found at that study that the foremost common mental disorders gave the impression to be alcohol and drug dependence, the prevalence estimates for psychosis were as high as those for depression, a finding in marked contrast from community estimates of those conditions , and in other vulnerable groups like prisoners and refugees, in whom depression is more common.
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Although high prevalences were reported for serious mental disorders, their substantial heterogeneity suggests that service planning shouldn’t rely on our individuals who participated, as prevalences suggests that researchers within the field have to interpret their findings in light of response rates. Reasons for nonparticipation in research is also associated with severe psychopathy, and investigators should consider gathering information from different sources to estimate the degree of underestimation or try to reinterview those that didn’t participate within the first place. (Fazel, 2008,P:2,6,7,9) These findings are crucial for understanding what to expect when we deal with these people. It helps focus on certain disorders and condition when training personnel, workers should be aware of the hazards of alcohol and intoxication and its psychological and physiological outcomes, how to save these people from alcohol toxication, how to make sure that help is given not going to be used to get alcohol.
Homeless people usually suffer from self mutilation which is harming one’ self, the rationale behind doing such action is stress, people usually undergo stressful experiences not develop serious mental state or behavioral problems, some folks that become hopeless and interact in maladaptive behavior. Selfmutilation could be a thanks to express and regulate overwhelming or intolerable emotions (e.g., depression) by creating a way of control.This would be very true for homeless youth who are neglected and abused. Therefore, some homeless youth who experience a stressor like being a victim of assault on the road may become extremely angry and self-mutilation may serve to supply a relaxing affect. the identical youth may later experience feelings of depression and low self-worth while recalling the physical and statutory offense experienced before effort, and in time, self-mutilation could also be accustomed detach from things. (Tyler, 2003, p:3,4) Knowing such facts and what these people are going through is very essential in treating them, we have to prevent the cause from such incidents to happen and be ready to treat these incidents once happened to prevent further damage.
Medical personnel are usually in contact with homeless people, they are the ones that see them in hospital or clinics when they seek medical attention. Knowledge of victimization reason gives a point of start which helps in evaluating confusing symptoms or conditions. Failure to screen routinely for interpersonal violence can undercut the effectiveness of medical care and drain resources, since unacknowledged trauma may increase medical and mental health symptoms.
For low-income women, routine screening for trauma should be meted out with an evolving assessment of basic needs. A doctor’s knowledge of patients’ medical and psychological needs must be combined with an understanding of the social context of their lives. Doctors should know the obstacles these people have so as to supply care and since of the limited resources especially for poor women, physicians must find ways to confirm that careis coordinated, continuous, and comprehensive. Institutional barriers are numerous and exacerbate trauma survivors entrapment in their symptoms and distress. Physician’s efforts to coach themselves about existing services and to advocate for greater depth and breadth of resources are critical steps for ensuring high-quality care and appropriate service use. If physicians don’t seem to be willing to embrace this issue, many victims of violence will still suffer and receive compromised care. (Bassuk, 1997, p:6,7)
My social innovation to address such problem for homeless people is to provide an organization which has a physical location and employees roaming the city to look for such individuals and provide them with needed healthcare and be trained to communicate with such people and provide them with safety to go get healthcare and get their mental problems fixed and provide individualized solutions to each person to let him be able to work by himself and able to get off the street. People roaming the streets should be well trained of the psychological disorders the homeless people are having and be able to administer a form of sedation in case the homeless started making some aggressive behaviours, try addressing their problems and fix it, and the medical team that we are working with should apply our strategy in understanding the obstacles these people are facing as mentioned earlier.
Our model should include some strategies that have been successful in other experiences which will be explained below. And evaluation is needed to ensure success of our strategy, although it might be difficult into assessing the number of homeless in the city as mentioned earlier, we do not have an estimate number of homeless in the city for various reasons mentioned earlier, but success of our strategy can be evaluated through questionnaires with homeless people, retention of homeless people in the jobs we provided and following up with them, we calculate the number of helped people who we were successful in rehabilitating them versus the number of people who were offered help and their situation did not change. The organization should be looking at journals trying to find innovative techniques implemented else where and were successful and try to implement it, the idea does not seem to be evolving although the tasks of the organization if it became successful might be increased like providing work. But in the mean time the organization scope and aim is not influenced by evolving unless the problem itself changed, which is unlikely. Homeless people will stay homeless, mental diseases will be the same, maybe drug abuse might change, where they abuse different form f drugs, but that would be a minor change in our technique of working.
The Housing First model was developed by Pathways to Housing to satisfy the housing and treatment needs of this chronically homeless population. The program is predicated on the assumption that housing may be a basic right and on a theoretical foundation that features psychiatric rehabilitation and values consumer choice. Pathways rely on what consumers need, if the person wishes housing without psychiatric treatment he can get what he wish.
Results were favorable with such approach, the Housing First program sustained an approximately 80% housing retention rate, a rate that’s considered a awfully successful one. More important, the residential stability achieved by the experimental group challenges long-held theory of treating mental disorders first, with all study participants had been diagnosed with a significant mental disease, the residential stability demonstrated by residents within the Housing First program indicates that a person’s psychiatric diagnosis isn’t associated with his or her ability to get or to take care of independent housing. So, there’s no empirical support for the practice of requiring individuals to participate in psychiatric treatment or attain sobriety before being housed. Participants’ ratings of perceived choice show that tenants at Pathways experience significantly higher levels of control and autonomy within the program. This experience may contribute to their success in maintaining housing. (Tsemberis, 2004, p 4)
Stability could be a important consider rehabilitation of homeless people, especially that different age groups are affected and not only adults. And it’s been found that homelessness is related to poor academic achievements. A study found that only 42% of the 3805 homeless children in New York who took the Degrees of Reading Power Test in 1988 scored at or above grade level, compared with 68% citywide. Other studies indicate that children who are homeless score lower on vocabulary and reading tests than the norm for scale. (Rafferty, 2003,p.3)Such problem is a very crucial one that has a lot of impacts on the future generations, Therefore my organization will work in enrolling young people into schools and assess them and try to solve the deficiency they are suffering from academically, and if tutors are needed, they will be assigned to put the children back on track to pace with the rest of the children.
England and Germany have a declined rate of homelessness and this goes to the measures taken to stop such thing from happening, My organization should also adapt these measures to stop homelessness issue from happening , the preventive measures taken were as following. Primary prevention measures, which are activities that decrease the chance of homelessness among the final population or large parts of the population. it’s at this level of prevention that general housing policy (supply, access and affordability), and also the overall ‘welfare settlement’ (such because the availability of income benefits, housing benefits, employment protection so on), are most relevant. Such measure is crucial in preventing homelessness, although solution seems expensive which is to pay people extra cash t afford rent and other stuff, but this money goes to be less expensive than once we start to require them out of the road and supply medical aid, the Secondary prevention which are interventions focused on people at high potential risk of homelessness thanks to their characteristics (for example, those with an institutional care background), or in crisis situations which are likely to guide to homelessness within the near future (such as eviction or relationship breakdown). These people will have an enormous focus from the organization, trying to produce them hand of support once they feel they’re on the point of collapse. Finally, the Tertiary prevention which are measures targeted at those that have already been laid low with homelessness. (Busch-Geertsema, 2008, p:5)
Providing of assertive community treatment is crucial for the rehabilitation of such individuals, the organization would be liable for doing such treatment, and it’ll depend upon its sources of provider into one service provider instead of multiple ones, the explanation behind that’s that a study has been conducted comparing between assertive treatment and a broker who has multiple sources of providing treatment and assessing the outcomes of every.
Results showed that assertive community treatment approaches were much more effective than broker case management in helping clients get services and resources needed by homeless people with serious mental disease. additionally, other evidence indicated that this study underestimated the effectiveness of assertive community treatment compared with broker case management in helping clients obtain resources. for instance, at six months, 95 percent of the clients within the broker condition who reported obtaining housing assistance got that assistance from place of work aside from the assigned treatment program, compared with only 20 percent of the clients within the two assertive community treatment conditions. Therefore, the assertive was less expensive than the broker case. Similar results were noted for entitlements. Assertive community treatment was also more practical than broker case management in producing positive client outcomes. Clients in both assertive community treatment conditions increased their time in stable housing over clients in broker case management. (Morse, 1997, P.6)
As workers are roaming the streets of the town, expecting to work out various variety of mental disorders, they must receive an adequate course about mental disorders. Adapted from a study in India, where they found that through this program, learners were ready to recognize a folie during a vignette, and reduced participants’ faith in unhelpful and pharmaceutical drugs. The program consists of The mental state educational program may be a four-day course that aims to extend recognition of mental disorders, improve appropriate response and referral, support people with mental disorders and their families, and improve mental state promotion in communities. The content of the educational program includes an introduction to mental state and mental disorders, mental state tending, practice-based skills, and mental state promotion. there’ll be a facilitator’s manual which is able to provide an inspiration for every training session including the aim, timing and required materials, background information for every session, a series of case studies that provide realistic scenarios describing people possibly experiencing mental disorders, suggestions for participatory activities and role-plays, and pictures and diagrams to help in explaining concepts and frameworks. (Armstrong, 2011, p.1,2)
